‘Oh, fine,’ said Tara guardedly. Did Jacqueline mean her mum dying? Or just the floods? When you put it like that, she thought, there was quite a lot.

‘Getting plenty of rest?’ Jacqueline reached out for the mug of peppermint tea Tara was offering her. ‘And support? Because as Kasia was saying just the other day, self-care is such an important—’

On cue, Tara’s phone rang and she turned it over without looking at the screen.

‘Sorry, Jacqueline, self-care?’

‘Self-care and boundaries between—’

It rang again, and Tara clicked it to voicemail with an apologetic look. ‘Keeping busy works for me,’ she said, which was true.

Jacqueline sighed and gave her the familiar ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything, Alfie?’ look that had been so effective in her previous career. Tara didn’t bite; there were things Jacqueline didn’t need to know.

‘So!’ She sipped her own mug of peppermint tea. It was basically hot scented water. ‘What was it you wanted to chat about?’

‘As you know,’ said Jacqueline, settling back on to the sofa, ‘I’ve been juggling home and work recently too.’

Tara nodded. What was Jacqueline talking about? Was it her husband who’d had the knee replacement? Or her son? She kicked herself: she never used to forget this sort of detail, but lately the pressures of work had developed unsettling sinkholes in her brain.

‘I’m so sad it’s come to this,’ Jacqueline went on, ‘but I’ve been advised by the specialist that I have to scale right back – apparently stress is a major factor in irritable bowel syndrome.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Tara quickly. IBS. She knew it was something medical. ‘So I’ve heard. The coffee probably doesn’t help either.’

Jacqueline gave her an ‘Exactly!’ look. ‘But it leaves me with an impossible choice. Do I reduce my practice hours, or step back as Centre Director? I can’t do both.’

Tara continued nodding, although now her brain was flipping through a Guess Who? version of the rest of the staff, trying to recall who it was who’d had the knee replacement. She made an effort to focus. Jacqueline seemed to be asking her for advice.

‘Your own health has to come first, Jacqueline,’ she said. ‘Oxygen masks, planes, and all that.’

Jacqueline sighed. ‘That’s what Paul says.’

Paul was Jacqueline’s husband; from what Tara could remember of him from the last Summer Party, he spoke entirely in management jargon.

‘So, strictly between us,’ Jacqueline leaned forward, ‘what would your feelings be, were the director’s role to become vacant, as it were?’

‘What?’ Tara was caught on the hop: she hadn’t expected Jacqueline to sacrifice her team-leader role for her counselling, which was, at best, the therapy equivalent of a supermarket Lemsip. ‘Me?’